


Wechselbalg

by breejah



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Changeling - Freeform, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Dark Jareth (Labyrinth), Dubious Consent, F/M, Gen, Horror, Villainous Jareth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-30 22:36:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19036996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breejah/pseuds/breejah
Summary: Toby is changing. He keeps hearing things that aren't there, seeing things that shouldn't be possible. What happens when his hallucinations turn out to be real?Dark Fantasy and Horror inspired Labyrinth tale, based off the myth of the Changeling. Rated M.





	Wechselbalg

_Fic inspiration by[Cudzinec](https://www.deviantart.com/cudzinec) on DeviantArt _

* * *

 

Toby leaned forward in the mirror, doing his best not to scream. Raising a trembling hand to his face, he stared at what he saw, drawing his right eye wide with thumb and forefinger. _There,_ when he leaned forward, was his pupil slowly turning a faint shade of icy blue with an enlarged center. Swallowing, he let his eyes raise, staring at the hair lining his head that had begun to change texture and color, going from a flaxen yellow to a silver-blonde that seemed to defy gravity, no matter how much he combed it or used sticky gel product.

His mom had scoffed at him when he asked about these things. Sensing his panic, despite doing his best to hide it, she finally caved and took him to the doctor. The aging pediatrician dismissed it as hormonal changes, Toby was quickly shifting to a young man, after all. He was almost fifteen now, so changes in his body were a normal thing. He didn’t think the lightening of his eyes, his distended pupil, or the change in the texture of his hair had anything to do with becoming a man, but he said nothing. It was as if when he pointed out the changes, people didn’t see them. Exasperated with his attitude, his father had finally grounded him when he’d begun to skip school in favor of walking to the library and trying to research whatever was happening to him.

Briefly, it entered his thoughts that his sister might know what was going on, but he didn’t call her. He didn’t know why, she was a mere phone call away, having left rural New York for the shores of Los Angeles as an investigative reporter, but something in his gut warned him not to involve her.

As the weeks shifted towards months, Toby began to seriously consider he was suffering from a mental illness. He shook, terrified to mention any of this to his mother, afraid and yet wanting desperately to tell her. It wasn’t just his looks that no one but him noticed that was bothering him now. Whenever he tried to sleep, he heard skittering and laughter in his room. To be honest, the noises frightened him, making him feel ashamed as he burrowed in his sheets like he did when he was five years and afraid of the dark. He’d even begun to sleep with the light of his desk lamp, but the chittering never stopped, it only seemed to linger more in the shadows of his closet when he did that.

One night, as he was hunkered under the sheets, the light suddenly flickered off with a pop and flash of brightness, followed by an inhuman shriek and a squeal of maniacal laughter. He closed his eyes tightly, tugging his bed clothes tightly around his head, and didn’t dare to breathe. That time, he felt the crawling of small hands over his body on the other side of the sheets. He  endured it for what felt like hours, knowing it was probably in reality only more than a few minutes, unable to stand the sheer force of dread that settled in his gut when he began to understand the chittering.

_‘He’s almost ready.’_

_‘You’re ours, we will take you soon.’_

_‘Toby, Tobias..._ **_Toviah_ ** _.’_

Hearing that last word made something suddenly ache fiercely behind his eyes. He panted, slamming his curled fists against his eyelids, finally letting out a panicked scream when the pain became unbearable. He didn’t know why, but that name was important, it triggered something deep inside him.

Suddenly, faint male laughter skirted up his spine - from his memory? Or was it coming from the room? He could barely hear it over the chittering and inhuman belts of laughter that seemed to come from every angle of the room. He kept screaming, terrified, somehow instinctively knowing that voice wasn’t friendly. _It wants me. No, no no no no no no no…_ Suddenly, his sister entered his mind’s eye. He wished desperately he had called her, she would understand. She was always one to sense reason in chaos, it was why she was so good at her job. She would make this all okay. Wanting her there more than anything, he hiccuped on a sob as he kept screaming, hearing that male laughter grow louder. _Sarah, please help me, I don’t know what’s going on, I’m so scared, I --_

“Jesus, Toby, what’s going on?!” His father suddenly yelled, the room flooding with light. When he bolted up from bed, he realized he was covered in sweat, his father staring at him furiously from where he was standing by his bedroom door, hands still on the light switch by the wall. Frantically looking around, he ignored his father’s slowly dissolving ire, sensing the growing concern, when he realized he was alone.

Nothing was there.

Shaking his head, he glanced back at his dad and shrugged his shoulders, not knowing what to say. _Am I going crazy?_ Somehow, that was both the most horrifying aspect and also the one that offered the most relief. If it was just his imagination, just his mind that was conjuring this, then that meant -

He burst into tears, drawing his knees up to his chest, burying his head in his hands. “I don’t know! I don’t know, dad...I think...I think something’s really _wrong_ with me.”

He could feel his dad’s eyes on him, hear him crossing the room as his mother murmured his name in concern from the doorway, obviously woken up by the screams that had turned his voice hoarse and scratchy. He couldn’t stop trembling, shaking his head rapidly when the mattress creaked and dipped to his side, his father doing something he hadn’t done in years - wrapping his arms around him and holding him close.

“We’ll call the doctors in the morning,” his dad started to say, but Toby wasn’t listening, still hearing the faint echoes of that male laughter in the back of his mind. Somehow, he knew that it wasn’t over, no matter what physicians his dad took him to. “Your mother and I will call Doctor Goodman in the morning, and…”

For some reason, he felt something _else_ staring at him. Drowning out his father’s words, words that sounded carefully worded, as if his father was finally accepting something really _was_ wrong with his son and he wasn’t quite sure what to do about it, Toby looked up, staring out the window.

There, by the window in the old tree he used to climb as a child, was a single barn owl staring eerily at him, its pale feathers glowing faintly against the silvery light of the moon. As he stared, he felt that echo of male laughter skirt up his spine again and he stiffened, feeling a scream wanting to rip from his throat, but he didn’t want to scare his parents any more than he already had. Instead, he forced his gaze away, burying himself in the covers when his dad went to stand but left the lights on at Toby’s solemn request. He heard his parents murmuring to each other just outside his room, his door cracked, where they could watch him.

“Christ, Karen, why didn’t you tell me about the issues he was having with his looks? Blue eyes, mismatched pupils, silver hair? What the fuck? He’s normal looking, and…”

“The doctor told me it was hormones, Robert, how was I to know it was something else? How…” His mother’s voice cracked, letting out a faint sob, and Toby closed his eyes, not wanting to hear the desolation in his mother’s voice, but unable to focus on anything else. “...how did I miss that my baby is losing his mind? He’s been telling me for months he felt wrong. Oh god, Robert, what have I done?”

Somehow, he finally fell into a troubled sleep, haunted by a man with silver-gold hair and piercing blue mismatched eyes.

* * *

“Hey, kiddo. Wake up.”

He bolted awake, panting, torn from sleep by the voice he was hearing as much as what he’d been dreaming about. In the dream, he’d been crawling across a stone floor...that turned into the walls, then the ceiling, and everywhere he tried to go, a crystal ball trailed him, like an all-seeing eye, followed by the faint echoes of that same male laughter he’d heard the other night. Oddly, the voice he woke up to had also been there.

_Sarah._

He blinked, staring, seeing his big sister - now a woman full grown at thirty - sitting on the side of his bed. Unable to say anything else, he bolted across the bed, launching himself into her arms, trembling and doing his best not to sob like some goddamn baby. Sarah was home! “You came home? How? That was fast for someone who lives across the country.”

“I was in Charleston for a story when dad called,” Sarah said, clutching him tightly. She immediately pulled back, staring and frowning, worrying her lower lip between her teeth. He stared in awe as her jade eyes suddenly went dark as she fingered his hair and touched his right temple, as if seeing the effects of the enlarged pupil only he seemed to notice.

_She can...see what’s happening to me?_

“Why didn’t you call me, Toby?” She said instead of commenting on what he wanted her to. He stilled, swallowing thickly, feeling tears brim. No, it had been just hope that he wasn’t entirely alone in this, she hadn’t really seen it. Still, the concern was obvious in her face. Was that dad’s doing, telling her about his night terrors from the other evening, or that he’d missed school today while his mother and father were trying to get him in to see a psychologist?

 _Because I couldn’t bear the idea that you thought I was going crazy, too. Seems you already do._ The answer lodged in his throat, clogged with hurt and unshed tears, and he simply shrugged a shoulder. What could he say, really? That he was afraid what was happening to him was real? Or that he was equally terrified that it wasn’t and it was just his mind playing tricks on him? He’d read up on schizophrenia - what if he couldn’t trust himself anymore, not able to tell what was real and what wasn’t? The very idea of that left him terror-stricken.

“You know you can tell me anything, right? I’d move heaven and earth for you, Tobes.”

He pulled back slowly, flashing her a polite smile, even if he wanted to cling to her and tell her he was seeing goblins, owls, and freaky male laughter at night. He also didn’t want to, afraid it would diminish the way his big sister thought about him. There wasn’t an easy answer to this and it left him feeling isolated and frustrated, deciding to withdraw instead with his dignity intact. Whenever his dad took him to the doctors, all that would soon be stripped away soon anyways. What was one more night of pretending things weren’t going to hell? He didn’t want to be his sister’s crazy brother - he just wanted to be the Toby she remembered.

“I know,” he finally murmured, brightening his smile even as he saw her frown deepen as she stared, looking on the edge of telling him something by the strange look in her eye, but his mother swept into the room then, shattering the moment.

Sarah’s strange concern seemed to dissolve as she turned to Karen and smiled, making Toby both curious and wary. What had she been close to saying? Glancing to his mom, he offered her a faint smile he didn’t feel.

“Who’s hungry?” Karen chirped, clasping her hands in front of her. That was his mom, always clinging to normalcy whenever things went south. He recognized it from a few years ago when his dad had cheated and nearly busted up the family. It hadn’t been the first time, either. He wanted to hate his dad at times, how he hurt his mother, but couldn’t - he was still his dad, as flawed as he was. He always suspected that was partly why his sister went to a college across the country, wanting to escape the house and her dad. It was why her mother had split before his mother and him had entered the equation, yet for some reason Sarah had stayed with dad, something he never had asked why.

“I could eat,” Sarah commented, glancing to him. He could sense she was wanting him to play along and he didn’t have the energy to object, knowing it would be more of a fight to stay in his room than simply join them at the family dinner table. Besides, being in his room would bring the sounds again - something that kept happening more and more since that initial nightmare.

He shrugged. “Sure.”

Together, they went downstairs, and Toby watched as his family pretended in front of him. Staring, he wasn’t what was more fake, his parents and his sister acting as if everything was fine, or the crazy noises he heard in his sleep and his room.

* * *

Sarah was busy assisting his mother do the dishes in the kitchen and his dad had retreated into his study to watch the news, or keep arranging his doctor’s appointments, he wasn’t sure. Bored, he wandered back upstairs, but went to Sarah’s room rather than his own, seeing her luggage half unpacked on the bed. As he stepped curiously into the room, he lowered his eyes, zeroing in on a single red-bound leather book hidden in the folds of her clothes.

Frowning, he reached for it. When his fingers connected with the cool leather, he jumped like he’d been shot. A sharp, painfully hot jolt rippled up his arm, making that headache he had felt the other day return tenfold.

Suddenly, that male laughter was back, this time behind him, _inside the room with him._

He whirled, realizing the room was now dark, the door closed, and leaning against the door was a creature that sent cold trembles down his spine. The man - _no, not a man, something else_ \- smiled, flashing him a set of sharpened incisors as he looked over Toby’s form.

“...you forgot about me, Toby?”

Something in his lyrical voice tugged at a memory he hadn’t witnessed in a long time, making him grimace as it fought to come to the forefront of his mind, but simply wouldn’t. He swallowed as the creature stepped forward, waltzing towards him, and Toby noticed warped horned creatures flickering at the edges of his vision, where shadows and secrets clung. When he tried to look directly at them, they were gone.

“What a pity,” the male said, stopping close enough he could touch Toby if he reached out. His hair was wild, much like the feral creature in front of him, dressed in a torn leather jacket and an iridescent fabric that looked almost indecent when Toby lowered his eyes, staring. He flushed, looking away. The male merely laughed and it made Toby shiver. He’d never heard of a laugh that embodied both dread and joy all at once, but this thing in front of him managed it.

“Y-You’re not real, you’re just a figment of my imagination. I’m hallucinating...” He spoke in a shaky tone, trying to convince himself as he squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the creature approach. He wanted to bolt, run screaming from the room, shattering the peaceful moment his family had just managed downstairs, just so long as he could get away from this thing in front of him, but for some reason he felt rooted to the spot.

The air felt like it was both stiflingly hot and arctic cold the closer he came. As he drew near, so did the sounds of feral, wild creatures; chirps and barks and keening cries of beasts he couldn’t even begin to imagine. _What manner of animal made a noise like that?_

“I ask for so little, Toviah, just a simple name from you, and you refuse me even that? Dismiss me as an illusion?” The male murmured, making Toby jolt at hearing _that_ name again. Why did it seem so familiar to him? Still, he was too scared to open his eyes and see the male in front of him - this wild creature that smelled like frankincense, cinnamon, damp earth, and crushed leaves.  “After all that I’ve done? I turned the world upside down, and I did it all for you. Surely a name isn’t too much to ask?”

The name hit him as he took a shuddering breath, chanting that the creature in front of him wasn’t real, it was all a hallucination, if he just called for Sarah, she’d listen and not judge him if he told her what had been happening, opening his mouth to call for her, but instead blurted the words the creature had wanted him to say instead. “Jareth…. _Goblin King_.”

Suddenly, the feral chirps of the beasts Jareth must have had with him went wild. Once more, Jareth’s laughter rippled through the room and his memory - back when he was a babe, something he had thought he had forgotten. His eyes snapped open as Jareth leaned close and Toby stared, watching the glistening, glittering substance that seemed to coat every pore of the creature in front of him. He wasn’t a man, he was something else - a force of nature, a nymph or elf or faerie, borne of the myths he always thought just folktales - and as Toby stared, he saw Jareth reach up, procuring a crystal from the air, watching water droplets form and freeze into a perfect sphere, and he looked down, staring at his reflection.

In that glassy surface, he saw his own skin glimmering with the same faint substance. He shook his head rapidly, his heart stammering rapidly in his chest, reaching up to touch his hair, his face, feeling his nails harden and lengthen, even as his incisors seemed to grow slightly in his mouth, catching on his tongue, bringing the faint metallic taste of blood. “No,” he whispered, in denial. **_No_ ** _, no no no no no…_

“And what’s _your_ name, son?” The creature, Jareth, whispered. “What’s your _real_ name? Not your mortal one.”

 _Toviah,_ his mind - or the creatures surrounding them, coming closer than ever before, being able to now see them out of the corner of his eye - said back. He refused to speak it.

“You think you belong here? With _them_?” Jareth spoke harshly, gesturing around the room, his eyes lowering to the book in Sarah’s luggage that he’d forgotten up until that moment. He smirked, reaching out, stroking the spine of the book, making Toby’s skin crawl when he saw the long talons the male’s fingers ended in. “Though, I have to admit, she played her role well.”

“Leave my sister out of this,” Toby hissed, the first time he hadn’t felt afraid since seeing the male in front of him. He watched the creature turn, arch one of those oddly shaped brows his way, flashing him a smile that felt like a shark had sensed blood in the water and was now stalking its prey - him.

“And if I don’t? What’ll you do about it, Toviah?” The male whispered, stepping forward. Toby stood his ground, not tearing his gaze from the dangerous male in front of him, even as he felt the world around them begin to shift and change shape, rippling and tearing into something new. In the distance, he felt the sun - _how’s that possible? It’s night time_ \- and a twisted labyrinthine earth, along with a castle. What terrified him was the twin moons, the black purple twist of shadows and glittering _otherness_ he sensed there, along with the sounds of yowling wild creatures of dark whimsey.

Just as Jareth reached for him, he felt the door behind him open. He whirled, seeing Sarah standing there, staring at him with wide eyes, but better yet - staring at _Jareth_ and seeing him, too. He felt his heart burst in aching relief, realizing she _could_ see the changes in him, see the man beside him, just as terror eclipsed his heart, knowing the male next to him was dangerous.

“ _Sarah_ ,” Jareth hissed, inches to his left, his tone both menacing and suggestive, making Toby jolt in shock at Jareth’s nearness and the implied emphasis at Jareth’s tone “You’ve aged so well. You’re practically bursting with ripeness. How _precious._ ”

He moved to dive for Sarah, keep her away from this creature, but Jareth pulled him tightly, his talons digging into his wrists at the last second, along with a lashing of whatever elements he seemed to control. He’d never felt a pain quite like this - both hot and numbingly cold, crying out. In the blink of an eye, the bedroom and his sister were gone, and they were standing in an antiquated throne room that was eerily familiar.

Jareth released him, stretching in a lupine grace onto the horned throne that had Toby backing up a few steps. He said nothing, merely conjured a crystal, and Toby swallowed, torn between running as fast his legs could carry him from the room and demand he know where he was and ask to be returned.

“You are one of us, Toviah, the answer is no,” Jareth suddenly murmured, turning the conjured item this way and that, as if picking up on his thoughts. Toby trembled, turning to leave, but caught sight of his sister in the glassy surface of the crystal. She looked frantic, tapping on a mirror, holding the book that had started all this nonsense.

The look of anticipation - a feral, hungry look on Jareth’s features as he stared - made Toby uneasy. “And my sister? You will leave her alone if I stay?”

Suddenly, the room went dark as Jareth looked back Toby’s way, his eyes glowing in the dimming light of the room. The yipping of creatures started from behind him, but Toby refused to break eye contact with the creature in front of him.

“You seem to think you have any semblance of power here, son,” The male growled, glancing back at the crystal. Sarah’s panic seemed to please him.

“She’ll come for me if you don’t make her forget,” Toby pleaded, stepping forward, even as he felt a skin crawling amount of creatures touching and caressing his back. “Please, I know….I know you have powers. Make her forget, or something. I don’t want her hurt. _Please._ ”

Jareth glanced back at him, the expression of joy on his face making Toby’s blood chill. “My boy, that’s the point.” He glanced back at the crystal and Toby could only stare as the creatures crawling over his form from behind suddenly tugged, _hard,_ drawing him back into the blackness of the castle and beyond as their claws and teeth bit at his skin, prickling his senses with pain.

The last thing he saw was Jareth tracing a talon along the crystal’s structure, smirking hungrily as he stared where Sarah’s face twisted inside the crystal from where she was still searching for him in her bedroom, beginning to cry as she called his name.


End file.
